Almost a Family

February 14, 2011
Soon after Pearl Harbor, Darnton's father, Barney Darnton, a correspondent for the New York Times, shipped off to the South Pacific, leaving behind infant Darnton and his older brother and mother. By year's end, Barney had been killed in the war. Darnton's mother, also a reporter and editor at the Times, struggled to raise her kids on her own. Darnton describes his adolescence, such as attending and getting expelled from prep school, attending college, meeting his future wife, and eventually finding his own way into journalism. In this unsentimental narrative, Darnton vividly chronicles the high-water era of classic journalism and his stints as a Times correspondent in Africa and Solidarity-era Poland, but what drives his memoir are the pursuit of the fullest possible picture of his father's death, the story of his mother's alcoholism and sobriety, and most of all, the quest for deeply buried facts about his parents and their relationship.

Starred review from December 15, 2010

A George Polk Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist skillfully investigates the history of his family, recovering the life of the father he never knew.

Near the end of this affecting memoir, veteran New York Times correspondent Darnton (Black and White and Dead All Over, 2008, etc.) marvels at the "difference that one little sliver of shrapnel meant to our lives." He's referring first to the bomb fragment that killed his father, NYT correspondent Barney Darnton, during World War II, and second to his mother "Tootie," brother Bob and himself, only 11 months old when Barney died. Not until 60 years later, after decades of romanticizing and mythologizing his father, did John set out to discover just who Barney really was. The man he unearths is far different from the idealized figure in his head, the entire excavation complicated by the layers of silence or fabrication Tootie supplied her boys as she buckled under the pressures of single-parenting, moving to a succession of increasingly modest homes and assuming a string of important and then less-worthy jobs, losing them not to the "grogginess" she complained of, but rather to alcoholism. Darnton chronicles how he and his brother grew and coped, but mostly he focuses on his parents, and especially the search for Barney. From notebooks, clip files, letters and government archives, the author assembles a picture of his father, and he learns even more from numerous interviews with his parents' colleagues, friends and family members. He journeys across America, to an island off Scotland and to the New Guinea beach where Barney's corpse was canoed ashore—he interviews the soldier horrified by handling that bloody detail and a native, only six at the time, who witnessed the aerial attack—following leads as far as possible, seeking only the truth. The facts he uncovers—about his father's character, about the incident that killed him, about his parents' meeting—are often uncomfortable, but, thirsty for honest answers, he faithfully reports what he learns.

Exquisitely paced, masterful storytelling.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2011

Darnton, a journalist and best-selling novelist (Neanderthal), spent his career working for the New York Times, first on local political stories and later overseas, starting in Africa. He received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage on Poland. Despite his career success, his memoir is devoted to his personal life, detailing his childhood during and after World War II and his relationship with his mother after the death of his father during the war. In many ways, this is the story of Darnton's efforts to learn more details about the relationship of his parents and how his father actually died. While he mentions his newspaper career, it is not the primary focus of the book. VERDICT Readers interested in the details of a journalist's work will be disappointed with Darnton's use of his career as a mere backdrop. But the narrative he presents, told almost as a mystery story, is engrossing. For memoir readers and those interested in World War II-era family experiences.--Joel W. Tscherne, Bryant & Stratton Coll., Cleveland

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2011
In this interesting and often moving memoir of loss, longing, and discovery, Darnton, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, was only 11 months old when his father, Barney, a war correspondent, was killed in New Guinea in 1942. Barneys wife and Johns mother was also a journalist. She was an emotionally fragile woman who was prone to long periods of severe depression, but she created and passed on to her children an idealized fantasy of their brief, earlier family life. Eventually John, assisted by his historian brother, Robert, felt a compulsion to learn more about a father he never knew. The result of their odyssey is surprising and painful but liberating. Their father is revealed as both less saintly and more interesting than the portrait created for them. As his revelations unfold, Darnton also offers a vivid description of the evolution of American society over the decades preceding WWII.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

Starred review from December 15, 2010

A George Polk Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist skillfully investigates the history of his family, recovering the life of the father he never knew.

Near the end of this affecting memoir, veteran New York Times correspondent Darnton (Black and White and Dead All Over, 2008, etc.) marvels at the "difference that one little sliver of shrapnel meant to our lives." He's referring first to the bomb fragment that killed his father, NYT correspondent Barney Darnton, during World War II, and second to his mother "Tootie," brother Bob and himself, only 11 months old when Barney died. Not until 60 years later, after decades of romanticizing and mythologizing his father, did John set out to discover just who Barney really was. The man he unearths is far different from the idealized figure in his head, the entire excavation complicated by the layers of silence or fabrication Tootie supplied her boys as she buckled under the pressures of single-parenting, moving to a succession of increasingly modest homes and assuming a string of important and then less-worthy jobs, losing them not to the "grogginess" she complained of, but rather to alcoholism. Darnton chronicles how he and his brother grew and coped, but mostly he focuses on his parents, and especially the search for Barney. From notebooks, clip files, letters and government archives, the author assembles a picture of his father, and he learns even more from numerous interviews with his parents' colleagues, friends and family members. He journeys across America, to an island off Scotland and to the New Guinea beach where Barney's corpse was canoed ashore--he interviews the soldier horrified by handling that bloody detail and a native, only six at the time, who witnessed the aerial attack--following leads as far as possible, seeking only the truth. The facts he uncovers--about his father's character, about the incident that killed him, about his parents' meeting--are often uncomfortable, but, thirsty for honest answers, he faithfully reports what he learns.

Exquisitely paced, masterful storytelling.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)